Sports with snark by John Shipley

I CAN’T BELIEVE I’M GOING TO TYPE THIS but I feel a little bad for Bryan Price, the Cincinnati Reds’ second-year manager who went Medieval on the local print press after Monday’s loss in Milwaukee. He’s having a bad week, and he unloaded on and in front of the wrong people.

Further, it seems clear he wanted his feelings known outside the visiting manager’s office and probably expected some sympathy, which is just stupid. However, here’s a little, tiny bit of sympathy for Bryan Price. For someone who has been the beat writer for two pro sports teams, including an MLB team, this is a story about managing a beat and how difficult it has become in the Steroid Era of the Information Age.

The issue of the Reds hiding the fact that Devin Mesoraco was not at Monday’s game at Miller Park, then getting caught, is a nonstarter. Tell the truth, end of story. You know who worries about opponents knowing too much about them? Losers.

The red flag in this story — for me, anyway — is the way Price took offense to the way a personnel move was announced by a reporter on Twitter before the team was able to a) tell the kid he was going back to Louisville and b) announce the move itself.

Twitter has become one more thing over which managers, players and coaches have no control, and in the hands of a professional journalist, that can be unpleasant. Apparently, Cincinnati Enquirer reporter C. Trent Rosencrans was on the same flight as two Reds players headed for St. Louis, both of them catchers, one of them an all-star. That meant Kyle Skipworth, a professional backup with a handful of major league games under his belt, was going back to Class AAA Louisville.

The real news was that Mesoraco — who hit 25 homers and drove in 80 runs last season — was one of those players and had been out with a hip issue. That news had to go out. Rosencrans would have been remiss not to report it.

Nevertheless, the Tweet apparently enraged Price, who held on to it for a week before criticizing Rosencrans on the heels of being caught in a misrepresentation about Mesoraco. This, too, will pass. But it raises an issue that I see beat writers everywhere struggling with, which is picking your spots.

Under new, instant and critical surveillance from their own readers, as well as faction of the blogosphere that believes it can do a better job, beat writers are under more pressure than ever to simply vomit what they know into the Internet. But the fact is, sometimes putting this shit out there — and I mean the real who-gives-a-shit? stuff — is counterproductive.

In this case, it wasn’t: Mesoraco is an all-star with a hip problem the team doesn’t want anyone to really know about (see: http://www.cincinnati.com/story/sports/columnists/paul-daugherty/2015/04/20/cincinnati-reds-baseball-devin-mesoraco/26076841/) and pissing off the team, well … oh, well. You do what you have to do.

But sometimes it’s really not worth it, and beat writers need to manage the pros and cons of throwing, say, a minor personnel move on Twitter, or tweeting that someone showed up to the clubhouse late, or someone appears to be running gingerly during BP. Being a beat writer is about building professional relationships with your sources. It’s not about being friends, but it is about developing trust. That’s how you get news.

If guys on the team, from management down, don’t trust you, you can’t do your job.

Reporters at ESPN, CBSSports and FOX don’t need to be concerned with burning bridges. They cover leagues, and talk mostly with agents, occasionally parachuting in to a clubhouse to be seen. They can tweet and write whatever they want, whenever they want, letting their content float into the ether confident they are not accountable in the morning. The beat writers — those grinding it out for 40 days of spring training and most of 162 games, at the park 12 hours a day in 20 different cities — have a beat to manage. Baseball has the best media access in all of sports; if beat writers aren’t managing that access correctly, they’re not doing their jobs, period.

So, Bryan Price, I get it. You can’t control the media — or for all we know at this point, your team — and the media now has more tools for catching you when you’re not being forthcoming. You were wrong on Monday, in many ways about many things, but that doesn’t mean beat writers can’t learn something from your pain.

IT’S DIFFICULT TO FATHOM what Adrian Peterson sees when he closes his eyes. Cats chasing laser pointers? His name on a Lite Brite? Who knows? Much easier is determining what ISN’T a part of the running back’s internal monologue:

The organization that went out of its way to pay him while he was suspended for beating his 4-year-old son with a stick; the teammates who, for a long season, invariably supported him; the fans who bought and continued to wear his No. 28 jersey.

One of the unfortunate things about professional team sports is the hesitance of teammates to turn on someone who clearly deserves it, and the Vikings’ public solidarity with their prodigal teammate seems more misguided as Peterson continues to distance himself from the team.

It’s time for Vikings players and coaches to stop sticking up for Adrian Peterson. It’s time for Vikings players to respond to their erstwhile teammate’s public attempt to force a trade, or his release, by acknowledging that they are just another set of pylons Peterson needs to negoiate on his way to the Hall of Fame. Hey, Vikings, you know who torpedoed your 2014 season? Adrian Peterson. Not Roger Goodell. Not Harold Henderson. Not the media. Not the corporate sponsors who cleared out their accounts. Not Matt Kalil.

Vikings fans who optimistically accepted Peterson’s image as one of the good guys — and in the process helped make him rich — have been similarly betrayed. Even those of the opinion that Peterson’s bloody punishment of his son was an unfortunate breach of acceptable parenting etiquette should now understand that their favorite running back wants out.

Adrian Peterson does not want to play in Minnesota. If he did, he would say so. And if he said so, the Vikings would pay him his money and move on to what would be a promising 2015 season. Peterson’s problem is that he has no leverage. Why is he doing this?

He’s angry with Kevin Warren, the Vikings executive who took the reins on the controversy last fall and saved the franchise from further embarrassment by working out a deal whereby the team could distance itself from the toxic running back while still paying him and, presumably, keeping their star player happy.

Warren was rewarded with a promotion, which seems to stick in the craw of Peterson — which is petty at best, childish at worst. He also could be bluffing, puffing out his feathers so the Vikings don’t even think about asking him to take a pay cut.

The more likely motivation for Peterson here is the promise of skating on his responsibility. His best chance of making the full $12.75 million he has coming next season is to stay in Minnesota, but he seems more interested in simply not having to come back here and look teammates and fans in the eye.

Vikings ownership, general manager and coach Mike Zimmer all publicly backed the running back during the NFL Combine, telling reporters that Peterson is a good guy and has done his penance. Further, then followed with a ring-kissing tour to Houston and New York. One suspects that as soon as Peterson made his intentions clear, the Vikings said something to the tune of, “OK, keep your mouth shut and we’ll see what we can do.”

Now Peterson, and his camp, are quiet, probably lighting candles for a trade, which would transfer Peterson’s contract (through 2017) and eliminate a long, public mea culpa that would begin next July in Mankato. It’s the best-case scenario in his camp’s tactical feint. But who wants to trade for a 30-year-old running back who costs nearly $13 million and will bring with him an avalanche of protests and bad PR? If he’s released and signs a free-agent deal, he’ll be luck to make half that. Further, the Vikings don’t have to release him. Then what would he do? Hold out?

Peterson seems genuinely contrite about what he did to his son. He has taken on the responsibility for that day, and it seems fair he should be able to move on from it. What he won’t take responsibility for is all the collateral damage, and his insistence on playing victim with the Vikings is unbecoming, unfair and tone deaf. It’s time his teammates and coaches said something about it.

One would be hard-pressed to blame Wild GM Chuck Fletcher if he watched last night’s 7-2 loss at Pittsburgh and decided then and there to fire coach Mike Yeo. By Yeo’s own admission, the Wild are a disaster. “Completely lost,” is how he put it.

But what good does it do to fire Mike Yeo in January? The Wild are last in the Central Division, 12th in the Western Conference and eight points out of a postseason spot. Scotty Bowman couldn’t fix the Wild right now. They are, for the season, irreparable. The team’s best players are mourning the deaths of their fathers. The goaltending stinks. And perhaps most damning, the young players everyone expected to be better this season are worse, including goalie Darcy Kuemper, whose agent, Josh Harding, parlayed him a one-way deal at least a season too soon.

There is a lot not to like about Yeo’s style. He is a mover of minutia in a sport that favors talent; a proselytizer of hard work coaching a sport that is 60 percent luck. His game plan requires so much concentration, so much dedication — such unquestioning buy-in — that when the slightest thing goes wrong, it collapses like pickup sticks. Worse, even when it works, it doesn’t always result in victory. Who wants to hear a team talk about how well it played after a loss? It’s unbecoming.

That said, Yeo’s system clearly can work, and like any coach, he would benefit by having an actual scorer on the roster. This can be laid at the feet of Fletcher, who last summer needed someone like Marian Gaborik — a fast, dynamic, unpredictable sniper — and signed slow, deliberate, predicable Thomas Vanek. Past his prime and running from gambling debts, Vanek hasn’t been particularly bad (comparisons to former Wild pylon Dany Heatley are unfair) but he is just like every other Wild player: He needs to be in the right place at the right time to make something happen.

On a playing surface with 10 increasingly large moving parts, over 82 games, it’s tough to make that happen. It’s cerebral and looks good on a whiteboard, but over the course of a season — let alone several — it’s difficult to rely on. It requires an almost robotic fealty in a sport where emotion can more than occasionally carry a team.

But it’s hard not to come back to the young players, guys like Charlie Coyle, Mikael Granlund, Jonas Brodin, Nino Niederreiter and Erik Haula. These guys in large part lifted the Wild past Colorado, which won the Central last season, in the first round of the playoffs last season. With the exception of Jason Zucker, a team-leading 15 goals, and Niederreiter, they seem to be absent. And even Niederreiter, who has 14 goals, is a team-worst minus-14. These are players the Wild were counting on, and they have failed to show up.

Maybe it was naive to expect them to; maybe Fletcher erred. But I don’t think so.

I recall a morning skate at the X where Hall of Fame coach Jacques Lemaire told reporters about one of his veterans — maybe Andrew Brunette, maybe Eric Belanger or Owen Nolan — finishing a practice with a heavy ride on the stationary bike. Across the room, Lemaire noted, rookie James Sheppard was lying on the floor, arms behind his head, watching TV. The old coach was having a good laugh over it, but he was pissed; and, we now know, he was right.

This, I sense, is a big problem on this team, and it likely is tearing it apart internally. Yes, it’s Yeo’s job to fix this stuff, but it’s too late. Firing him now would be, as Eric Stratton once said, a completely stupid gesture.

The Wild’s bed is made. An interim coach won’t get them to the playoffs, nor will trading young players for veterans on the tail ends of their contracts. This team, its coach and its fans need to sit out the season in the miasma and wait for the hammer to fall in April, when it actually will do some good.

IT’S A UNION’S JOB TO PROTECT ITS MEMBERS, but one wonders why the NFL Players Association is going to such lengths to protect Adrian Peterson, who has admitted beating his 4-year-old son bloody with a stick yet has become, in the eyes of many football fans, the victim of the NFL’s nefarious plot against freedom.

To some extent, of course, the NFLPA’s reasoning is clear: This is kind of a pickup-sticks moment for the union. Commissioner Roger Goodell did, in fact, kind of make all this up as we went along. And, yes, it was primarily a response to fans and sponsors tired of the NFL’s domestic assault, uh, issue. The union’s primary problem is the fact that it bargained away its right to call foul by giving the commissioner a wide berth to discipline players through vague language in the CBA. The secondary problem, at least in the case of the Vikings’ all-time leading rusher, is that for most people watching this narrative unfold, Goodell’s actions seem reasonable.

This is because in civilized society it is illegal to physically assault other people, and particularly unseemly when it’s a man hitting a woman — or a grown man hitting a 4-year-old with a switch. One can fashion a mathematical equation to explain that domestic assault isn’t any more prevalent in the NFL than in general public, but that’s not unlike explaining how much money a new stadium will bring to a metropolitan area. Which is to say, there is math and there is common sense. Between Ray Rice, Greg Hardy and Adrian Peterson — all punished for domestic assault by law in the past several months — this is a losing argument.

Buried deep within the NFLPA’s 73-page lawsuit filed on behalf of Peterson Monday is an odd bit of lawyerin’ that makes a kind of sense if defending Peterson is the goal but presents a problem of its own. Part of the union’s case against the NFL, Goodell and the arbitrator who upheld every piece of Peterson’s 15-game suspension this season is this: nine games missed while on the Commissioner’s exempt list, and six more taken by Goodell’s unpaid suspension, is the most severe domestic assault punishment ever thrown at an NFL player.

It should be noted this is true only because an arbitrator overruled Goodell’s indefinite suspension of Ray Rice. That was expanded from, you guessed it, two games after video tape of him knocking his wife unconscious was leaked. It also should be noted that Peterson was paid for most of these games. As he told ESPN this week, “I still made $8 million.”

On pages 56-59 of the lawsuit, the NFLPA sites eight instances of domestic assault by unnamed NFL players that were punished by fines or suspensions of two games or less, including:

— The first cites a player who “banged (fiancee’s) head against a towel rack,” “threw her down a flight of stairs” and “broke nine fingernails.” Charged dismissed, two-game suspension overturned. Of note: in the union text, the word “allegedly” never appears.

— A player convicted of two counts of “domestic-related violence” received a two-game suspension.

— A player who pleaded no contest to battery, vandalism and false imprisonment in assault of former girlfriend had a one-game suspension reduced to a fine.

— Two games for pushing and choking pregnant ex-girlfriend.

— One game for pushing girlfriend to pavement, where she struck her head.

— One game for pushing mother of his two two children into a bed post, causing injuries that required stitches in her head.

The union’s point is made: two games is the standard maximum suspension. But does this litany say, “Man, Adrian Peterson’s punishment was too harsh?” Or does it say, “I think the NFL might have a problem and should do more to fix it?” In myopic legal terms, it indicates Peterson’s punishment was exorbitant; big picture, it sets up the need for exorbitant punishment.

Maybe the NFLPA can buy Peterson a few more paychecks by adding this to his defense — surely he won’t play in either of the Vikings’ last two games — but it also seems the union has done some of the league’s homework for future suspensions and/or litigation.

RAY RICE DOESN’T HAVE A FOOTBALL TEAM ANYMORE, but he’s found a blocker in wife Janay, whom he KO’d with an efficient left hook in a closed-circuit event fought in an Atlantic City casino elevator, which, one guesses, had often been host to similar events.

Reinstated from the NFL’s yearlong suspension by an arbitrator, a former U.S. district court judge who declared, essentially, that NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell had no grounds to expand what initially was a two-game suspension to an indefinite one, Ray Rice is now sending out résumés.

Barbara S. Jones was tasked with determining whether Goodell had been misled by Rice when he researched the first suspension. It was only after TMZ released video of Rice actually punching Janay Rice in the face that Goodell, pilloried for the two-game penalty, changed his tune. So did the Ravens, who ceremoniously released the running back. No, Jones ruled, Rice did not mislead the NFL. Keen observers of the obvious will quickly deduce that Rice is eligible to return to the NFL not because the league doesn’t have the right to suspend him, but because Goodell screwed up the first time. So while most of us were shocked to see Rice allowed back in, we now know we should not have been.

Here’s the question, though. Because Roger Goodell doesn’t do anything the NFL’s 32 owners don’t want him to do, we know that the NFL doesn’t want Rice back. Can those 32 teams decline to sign him without further legal repercussions?

It took me 5 seconds to Google the elevator footage before writing this blog, and rest assured thousands will do the same every time Rice steps onto a field wearing an NFL team logo on officially licensed NFL apparel. There was a time someone as good at football as Rice would already have been playing; you know, like, three months ago. But the blast door has been shut; no one is good enough to make that PR nightmare worth it.

The NFL, which participated in Senate hearings about domestic violence in Washington on Tuesday, wants this over with; Rice in an NFL uniform will only perpetuate it. He may be contrite; he may be that “good guy” who had “one bad day,” the official campaign of Team Rice. That’s hard to believe, but in any case, Rice’s return to the NFL now requires at least one of its 32 owners to break ranks and sign him. These guys tend to be savvy businessmen, and they know remaking Rice’s image would be the PR Miracle on Ice.

Is that collusion? Somewhere, someone is starting to research that case, but this isn’t about agreeing to lower the price on talent — as major league baseball owners did — this is about not wanting your business associated with someone who hits women. Making such a decision isn’t against the law. It’s also why Janay Rice is blocking for the guy who cold-cocked her, then briefly stood over her like Ali stood over Sonny Liston.

In five full NFL seasons, Ray Rice has run for more than 6,000 yards, and he’s only 27. In NFL years, he has about three good ones left; there is a lot of money yet to be made. If that sounds mercenary, it really isn’t; this was the deal Janay Rice signed on for, and who knows whether she can trust this guy if he’s frustrated, out of work and out of the spotlight?

Adrian Peterson won’t play again this season, regardless of what happens with this week’s appeal. It’s simply too late. He’s no longer part of the 2014 Vikings, no matter what his teammates say. He’d only be a distraction. But he will play again because there is a large portion of NFL fans who don’t believe he did anything wrong when he hit his 4-year-old with a switch. And even those who do, those who never have and never will be inclined to hit their children, can understand being that angry at a child.

But punching a woman the way Rice did is too far off the charts of polite society, and too emblematic of a tradition of NFL players who hit their spouses. Peterson will play again — not for long, likely, and never as well as he once did — but Ray Rice is done.

THERE IS A REASON TEDDY BRIDGEWATER WEARS A GLOVE when he plays football, Tim Hasselbeck said, and it’s not a choice. It’s a necessity.

Hasselback made the rounds with Twin Cities media this week after he criticized the skills of Vikings rookie quarterback Teddy Bridgewater.

A quarterback who played parts of four seasons in the NFL, Hasselbeck was somewhat taken aback by the reaction in Minnesota, which was viral if not virulent. We talked Monday night, and he was smart and candid. One of the more interesting subjects was Bridgewater’s use of a glove on his throwing hand.

One of the reasons Bridgewater was available for the Vikings at the end of the first round was a poor NFL combine, which the Louisville junior negotiated with wearing gloves. One of the reasons the Vikings traded up to get Bridgewater was a private workout for which Bridgewater wore his gloves — and during which he was, reportedly, appreciably better.

“I wore a glove on my right hand only in Chicago, to get a better grip on the football when it was cold,” Hasselbeck said. “Doug Flutie, trying to get a better grip on the ball up there in Canada, would go to a glove. Peyton Manning has gone to a glove for a reason: Father Time has affected him.

“(Bridgewater) wears a glove for a reason, and there are certain guys that don’t have to wear a glove — for a reason. The reality is he doesn’t throw the ball the way many first-round quarterbacks picked earlier throw the ball; that’s exactly why he was still around when he was around.”

That might make for a good nickname — Bridgewater has been known early as “Teddy Two Gloves” as well as “Two-Minute Teddy” for his clutch play late — but it might not make for a good quarterback. Hasselbeck noted that his brother, Matt, who led Seattle to the Super Bowl in 2005, has big hands.

“I would bet my brother’s hand is an inch bigger than Teddy’s, and he doesn’t wear a glove and he’s in his 17th year in the NFL,” Hasselbeck said. “There are guys who have found a way to make it work. Drew Brees, we were in the same draft and he was unimpressive physically; but he’s had that shoulder injury, and through intense and relentless rehab, he has maintained his strength and is probably a better passer now than when he came out. If Teddy develops into that — someone who is driving the football down the field, and consistently to those parts of the field that are difficult — then it changes the discussion.

“But I think it’s naive to think there isn’t a reason he wears a glove; the throws he already struggled with in the NFL are throws everybody saw on tape, and it’s why he was drafted where he was drafted. News flash: If I threw the ball like Derek Carr, I would have been one of the first three quarterbacks taken.”

Hasselbeck is keenly aware of the fact that he did not light the NFL afire; in parts of four seasons, he started five games, and once had a zero QB rating, in a 27-0 loss to Dallas. But isn’t bitter about it; he knows he just couldn’t make the throws, consistently, that he needed to make for a long NFL career.

Bridgewater missed on a couple of those throws in the Vikings’ 24-21 loss to Green Bay last Sunday TCF Bank Stadium, both two receiver Charles Johnson, who had gotten wide open in the Packers red zone. Once, Bridgewater overthrew him by a wide margin; the other time, he made Johnson reverse course and make a difficult catch at the sideline, and he couldn’t.

“We’re talking about designed plays where the primary receiver has five yards of separation, and the quarterback isn’t able to make the throw — and he was unable to make the throw in college,” Hasselbeck said. “I don’t think that’s something that should be ignored. And it won’t be ignored by defenses; they’re going to be begging that quarterback throws like that all day long.”

Hasselbeck, who started scouting Bridgewater as part of his job as an ESPN analyst right after last February’s Super Bowl, said he watched film on most of the games Bridgewater played as a sophomore and junior at Louisville — and all eight of his NFL games. The issue, he said, is that he sees the same thing he saw in college.

On the plus side, Bridgewater is 3-4 as a starter for a team that has lost its best player, Adrian Peterson, for all but the opener, and has had four other offensive starters miss at least five games. As former Tampa Bay coach and ESPN analyst Jon Gruden noted this week, “They’ve had some adversity there in Minneapolis, and that team still fights and plays hard. I like that.”

“I’m not saying there aren’t going to be seasons when he starts,” Hasselbeck said. “Not everyone gets to have Brady or Manning or Roethlisberger, but people at least want to know, can he turn into Joe Flacco? Can he have a great a Super Bowl season like Eli Manning? Can he be a starter for a decade and win playoff games like Phillip Rivers? Are we building around a guy that, quite frankly, doesn’t have the frame or the skills of a great quarterback?”

It’s a legitimate question; and don’t think the Vikings aren’t asking themselves the same thing.

THE BACKLASH AGAINST NFL COMMISSIONER ROGER GOODELL’S suspension of Adrian Peterson has been odd if not unexpected. The inevitable reiterations — essentially, “That isn’t child abuse!” — were matched by a wave of fervent anti-NFL sentiment that had little to do with the Vikings running back or the beating he inflicted on his 4-year-old last summer.

Rather than face a Texas jury that could very conceivably have acquitted him of a felony child abuse charge, Peterson on Nov. 4 pleaded down to a misdemeanor, presumably to immediately end the legal process and make himself eligible for reinstatement to the Vikings, who had requested his paid suspension on Goodell’s mysterious exempt list. While missing nine games, Peterson netted $6.2 million and, apparently, “smoked a little weed.”

But Goodell dropped the full extent of his new Code of Conduct powers on Peterson, a six-game unpaid suspension that will take him through the end of the season. Even then, Goodell wrote in a lengthy open letter to the Vikings’ all-time leading rusher, Peterson must get psychiatric help and then apply for reinstatement, which won’t be considered earlier than April 15, 2015. In the world of NFL supplemental discipline — as they call it in the NHL — this is Draconian.

Yet even some of Peterson’s most vocal critics were unhappy with Goodell’s decision simply because Goodell was the person who made — or was at least the vessel that conveyed — the decision. Goodell is an unpopular man, which is probably the first requirement of his job description. He’s the mouthpiece for 32 ruthless businessmen who are, we now know, making billions of dollars on the backs of men slowly killing themselves — and occasionally causing great, and sometimes fatal, bodily harm to civilians — for non-guaranteed contracts.

As the mouthpiece for these gentlemen, he is the guy who announces, for instance, that Ravens running back Ray Rice will be suspended for two games because he knocked out his wife and dragged her unconscious body out of a hotel elevator. Hence, he was the man vilified for that decision after a video tape SHOWING Rice knock out his wife surfaced — weeks after the initial punishment. This time, he kicked Rice out of the league. Too late!

Do not weep for Goodell; he has traded popularity for security. According to a series of reports that began earlier this year, owners have compensated him with a package that was worth more than $44 million in 2012.

So here’s the question: Can Goodell, and the unscrupulous, dangerous, duplicitous organization for which he barks, even make the right decision? For many, the answer is no, and that seems unfair.

Some of the criticism published in the immediate aftermath of Peterson’s suspension was not about its severity but its failure to be about spouse abuse. While Rice was suspended indefinitely — he’s in the middle of an appeal right now — San Francisco’s Ray McDonald is playing after prosecutors declined to charge him on an August arrest, and Carolina’s Greg Hardy is on the exempt list, paid and undisciplined because his legal case is pending.

But the NFL’s critics can’t have it both ways. Peterson hit his son (pretty brutally according to photos taken days later by his Minnesota pediatrician) not his wife, and that was the case before Goodell. The tone of his letter explaining the discipline to Peterson was righteous, which is hard to take when noting that the NFL really only started to take notice of this stuff after corporate sponsors such as NIKE, Budweiser and Radisson started to squirm. Some took umbrage that Goodell took into account the running back’s refusal to cooperate with the NFL’s review of the case — which seems monumentally misguided on Peterson’s part given the fact that the NFL found a way to pay him millions while his case was decided in court.

But If Goodell used that against him, well, good for him. Why wouldn’t you? It’s a private, albeit tax-exempt, business not a kibbutz.

Whatever the reasons for Peterson’s suspension, however Machiavellian, they must at some point be taken for what they are: the full extent of NFL law. Some have complained that Peterson is a victim of timing; that the Rice case made him a patsy of sorts. As Charles Foster Kane’s butler said, yes and no; no one made Peterson hit his 4-year-old with a tree branch. If anything, Peterson’s punishment seems to indicate Rice’s NFL career is over. And probably that of Greg Hardy, who is appealing a domestic abuse conviction.

Was the NFL willing to continue sweeping this stuff under a rug? Yes, but in the age of social media, this is no longer possible. In many ways, this all started when the Ravens themselves called a news conference with Rice and his wife, then Tweeted out HER apology. Oops.

But at some point, motivation has to become secondary to action, and Peterson’s suspension seems to be the first step in what could be a painful rehabilitation for a league that was desperately in need of an intervention. If the NFL is to reform, it must start somewhere.

Tom Brunansky helped create some individual success stories as the Twins’ hitting coach last season. Asked if one stands out for him, the Twins hitting coach demurred.

“They’re all unique,” he said.

Brunansky was brought back in the role he began with his former team in 2013 on Thursday, the first official member of manager Paul Molitor’s staff.

As a team, Minnesota improved in nearly every major hitting category, from batting average (11th in all of baseball at .254) to on-base percentage (fifth a .324) and runs scored (seventh, 715). They came from behind for 31 victories, and were 17-13 in games decided in the last at-bat.

Individuals stood out.

Second baseman Brian Dozier, 27, ranked second in the American League in runs scored and hit a career-high 23 home runs. Infielder/outfielder Danny Santana, 23, hit .319 over 101 games in his first major league season. Outfielder Oswalo Arcia, 23, hit 20 homers in just 103 games iafter being promoted from Class AA New Britain. And veteran catcher Kurt Suzuki, 31, hit a career-high .288 and made his first All-Star Game.

The only constant, Brunansky said, is trust.

“Hitting looks easy; it’s not,” he said. “That’s the first premise you need. We have to build relationships and trust with the players. It’s not that we hold their careers in our hand, but we can be a help or a detriment, and we have to realize that. Our job is to reach every individual, however we do it.”

Brunansky called Arcia a “Ground Zero” project. He hit .251 with 14 homers and 43 RBIs as a rookie in 2013. His batting average fell to .231 last season, but he hit more homers (20) and drove in more runs (57) while playing in just six additional games.

He also struck out 10 more times for a 127, second to Dozier’s 129 in 53 more games.

“Obviously, Arcia has spent a lot of time with me, from Ground Zero, so to speak,” Brunansky said. “We were building him brick by brick, so that was something exciting with the success he’s had. I know there are places he can improve; he had quite a few strikeouts, and it’s learning process. But we’re trying to expedite that process, and I’m glad I’ll be able to add more bricks to that wall.”

Brunansky, 54, played 14 major league seasons, his first seven with the Twins, but never on a team with Molitor, 58. But they have worked together as coaches since Brunansky, who was coaching high school baseball in his native California, joined the Twins organization in 2010.

Last season, both were on Ron Gardenhire’s major league staff.

“When we were in the minor leagues together, him as a rover, he would always come down to the cage, and we would always pick his brain, and last year was no different,” Brunansky said. “I used Mollie quite a bit, as I did with (former hitting coach) Joe Vavra. (Molitor) would sit there and we would more or less just talk about hitting, the game, our ballclub.

“We had numerous chats; it’s always fun to pick his brain. I’m curious like the rest of us to see how he’s going to run the ballclub, but I do know the last two months, the way ballclub was working — with the speed and everything else — that’s how he wants the ballclub to run.

“Mollie and I have the same thoughts (on hitting), and we throw things off each other, and that’s fun. It’s always good to pick something up from him.”

Glen Perkins has been working out at Target Field this fall but has yet to throw a baseball since being shut down Sept. 19 because of a forearm strain and nerve irritation, the Twins closer said Tuesday.

One of two Twins players to show up for Paul Molitor’s introductory news conference as Twins manager, Perkins said his rehab has gone fine.

“I haven’t played catch, obviously,” he said. “It’s been six or seven weeks. I’ll play catch in about a month.”

Perkins was 4-3 with a 3.65 earned-run average and 34 saves in 41 chances when the Twins shut him down after a battery of tests on his left throwing arm. The Twins’ hardest-throwing pitcher, clocked as high as 98 mph, saw his velocity dip late and gave up five home runs in his last eight appearances of the season.

“I’ve never really done as much pre-throwing movement work as I’ve done this year,” he said. “I would always work out, but when I started throwing was when I did my arm stuff. So I’m excited to see after six weeks of arm work how I throw.”

Perkins and teammate Joe Mauer, both Twin Cities east siders, expressed excitement over the hiring of Molitor, a St. Paul native who, like Perkins, played at the University of Minnesota — and like Mauer went to Cretin-Derham Hall.

Molitor has been around most of the Twins players as a roving instructor for the past several years, and last season was the infield coach on manager Ron Gardenhire’s staff.

“I think he made a big impact on a lot of our players,” Mauer said. “He is one of the smartest baseball men I’ve ever been around. I’m definitely excited about having him as a manager.”

Mauer told a story of a Class A game when Molitor was in town. Mauer was batting third and on the dugout steps when Molitor sidled up to him and watched the starting pitcher warm up.

“After watching seven or eight pitches, he knew every pitch he was going to throw,” Mauer said. “That kind of opened up my eyes. I was 18, 19 at the time. I knew I was going to be around this guy and learn as much as possible.”

As Twins general manager Terry Ryan spoke to reporters Tuesday at Target Field, Doug Mientkiewicz was smiling over his shoulder, a beaming specter on the day Paul Molitor was introduced as the Twins new manager.

Mientkiewicz was one of the Minnesota players featured on an ESPN The Magazine cover in 2002, when the Twins emerged from the threat of contraction to win the American League West and, ultimately, advance to the ALCS. From a large reproduction of that magazine cover, he seemed to be watching the man who declined to promote him.

The former Twins first baseman was one of about eight candidates to interview for the managers job, and four to get a second, but finished just short after leading the Class A Fort Myers Miracle to a league title.

“He was close,” Ryan said.

A terrific defensive player who twice hit .300 for the Twins, Mientkiewicz was a fiery player, and he didn’t check his personality at the door when he became the Miracle manager prior to the 2013 season, during which he rumbled with an opposing manager.

Ryan was asked how Mientkiewicz, 40, took the news when Molitor got the job.

“He was hoping to get this job, and he took it exactly the way you’d expect he would,” Ryan said. “He was very disappointed.”

Ryan said the Twins are assuming Mientkiewicz will manage in the system again next year. “It’s just a matter of where,” he said.

Unless Mientkiewicz is so angry he would manage in another organization, or he’s picked for Molitor’s major league staff, that likely will be at Class AA New Britain or Class AAA Rochester if Red Wings Gene Glynn makes the move to the majors after restoring the Triple-A team’s respectability.

The Miracle, the Twins’ High-A team, won the Florida State League in Mientkiewicz’s second season.

“He’s probably ready for a change,” Ryan said.

Asked if he tried to let Mientkiewicz down easy, Ryan said, “I think I did.”

“I tried to tell him that he was quite impressive in the interview,” the GM said. “I didn’t necessarily agree with everything he said, but I appreciated that he was upfront and honest. He had opinions, and you knew he was going to have opinions because that’s the type of human being he is.”

Some believe Mientkiewicz, who played 12 major league seasons and caught the final out in Boston’s 2004 World Series title, is a nascent first-class manager. Ryan didn’t disagree.

“He has that possibility,” he said. “I think, and I told him this, he would benefit from a couple more years in the minor leagues and getting up with the more mature player. Managing Double-A and Triple-A would benefit a lot of young managers, and I say that knowing Paul hasn’t managed a game. But Doug has a wealth of personality to go with his baseball knowledge and background; he’s got a chance to be pretty good here pretty soon.”

Glynn also was a finalist to succeed Ron Gardenhire, fired Sept. 29 after 13 seasons, six of them resulting in division titles — although the last four were 90-loss seasons.

“Gene Glynn was impressive,” Ryan said. “He’s got a baseball talent about him that’s pretty impressive. There’s a reason we were pretty good down in Rochester these past couple years. He was in there right until the end. We didn’t push him out in early October.”